Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Collective Efficiency Building

解决当地的环境威胁和提高社区质量往往需要众多不同居民的集体行动。一个环境和社会经济威胁的例子，造成邻里规模的集体行动问题是入侵物种。在私人土地上打击入侵物种并实现相关的生态和社会经济效益，通常需要激励关键数量的居民参与对其财产的控制工作。大量文献表明，在这种集体行动的情况下，居民可能会受到他们对集体效能的看法的影响，或者他们认为有足够多的其他人会做出贡献，从而实现集体目标的程度。尽管最近的文献表明居民？入侵物种控制行动可能与集体效能感有关，但缺乏关于如何在居民中建立邻里集体效能感以鼓励持续参与入侵物种控制的实地研究。相反，大多数旨在激励居民参与控制工作的推广和教育计划主要集中在为控制用品提供财政补贴和有关入侵物种影响的信息上。这个项目调查的是外展干预？的有效性，提高居民的集体效能和持续参与入侵物种控制的看法，他们的财产和在他们的邻居。如果这种基于社会心理学原则的干预是有效的，那么这项研究将提出一种新的方法，可以用于在多种背景下建立集体效能，其中提供公共产品需要众多不同参与者的行动。例如，干预可以被应用于提高居民的集体效能，以改善邻里非正式的社会控制或提高居民参与其他亲社会行为，这些行为在邻里范围内有影响，例如为当地公园或学校做志愿者。该项目特别寻求增加居民参与控制入侵的小火蚁（Wasmannia auropunctata）在夏威夷岛的私人土地上。研究人员与大岛入侵物种委员会合作，进行了一项实地实验，以研究集体效能建设干预措施在多大程度上增加了居民参与行为的程度，以监测和减少小火蚁在其财产和社区中的传播。一些被招募参加六个社区会议的居民将收到个人和集体的蚂蚁控制目标，鼓励他们对未来的蚂蚁控制行为做出公开承诺，并有机会讨论和分享他们的努力。其他居民将获得更多传统使用的“知识转移”方法和蚂蚁控制用品的财政补贴。研究人员评估了新的和传统的方法的有效性，使用居民的看法和自我报告的行为干预前后的调查，并监测小火蚁种群。该研究通过整合一系列用于或假设建立集体行动情况下的集体效能和合作的技术来解决文献中的空白。

Addressing local environmental threats and improving neighborhood quality often requires the collective actions of numerous and diverse residents. One example of an environmental and socio-economic threat that poses a neighborhood-scale collective action problem is invasive species. Combatting invasive species across private lands and achieving the associated ecological and socio-economic benefits typically requires motivating a critical number of residents to engage in control efforts on their property. A wide range of literature has suggested that, in such collective action scenarios, residents may be influenced by their perceptions of collective efficacy, or the extent to which they believe that enough others will contribute so that the collective goal will be achieved. Although recent literature has suggested that residents? invasive species control actions may be related to perceptions of collective efficacy, field research is lacking on how neighborhood collective efficacy can be built among residents to encourage sustained engagement in invasive species control. Rather, the majority of outreach and educational programs aimed at motivating resident engagement in control efforts have focused primarily on providing financial subsidies for control supplies and information about the impacts from invasive species. This project investigates an outreach intervention?s effectiveness at enhancing residents' perceptions of collective efficacy and sustained engagement in invasive species control on their property and in their neighborhood. If this intervention, which is based on social-psychological principles, is effective, then the study would suggest a novel approach that could potentially be used for building collective efficacy in a diversity of contexts in which the provisioning of a public good requires the actions of numerous and diverse participants. The intervention could, for example, be applied to enhance residents' collective efficacy to improve neighborhood informal social control or enhance resident engagement in other pro-social behaviors that have an impact at the neighborhood scale, such as volunteering for local parks or schools.This project specifically seeks to increase resident engagement in control of the invasive little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) on private lands on the island of Hawai'i. The researchers, in collaboration with the Big Island Invasive Species Committee, conduct a field experiment to examine the extent to which a collective efficacy-building intervention increases residents' participation in behaviors to monitor and reduce the spread of little fire ants on their property and in their community. Some residents recruited to attend meetings in six communities will receive individual and collective ant control goals, be encouraged to make public commitments regarding future ant control behavior, and have opportunities to discuss and share their efforts. Other residents will receive more traditionally used "knowledge-transfer" approaches and financial subsidies for ant control supplies. The researchers assess the effectiveness of new and traditional approaches using pre- and post-intervention surveys of resident perceptions and self-reported behavior, and monitoring of little fire ant populations. The study addresses gaps in the literature by integrating an array of techniques used or hypothesized to build collective efficacy and cooperation in collective-action situations.